


Find Me Somebody (To Love)

by dancinbutterfly



Category: Great Pretender (Anime)
Genre: Anal Sex, Banter, Canon Compliant, Canon Related, Chromatic Yuletide, Commitment, Declarations Of Love, Falling In Love, First Time, Getting Together, I'm on a boat, Idiots in Love, Insecurity, Kissing, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Missing Scene, Smoking, Spoilers for Wizard of the Far East, Yuleporn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:35:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27775468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: “This is some angle right? For the next con? Just tell me, alright?” Edamura drags his teeth over his lower lip and visibly attempts to blink away his fatigue and frustration and the hurt that he so obviously feels. “It’s late, and I’m tired.”Oh, he isprecious. Laurent catches him by the chin with his other hand and holds him steady. “No con, my sweet soybean.”“I amnotyour sweet soybean.” He snaps but he doesn’t pull away.“You are.” He runs his thumb over that pretty lower lip. “Sweet. And mine.”~(=◕ᆽ◕ฺ=)~The Suzaku job is over. Laurent has done all he set out to do and then some. There's only one thing thing left he hasn't won yet: Edamura Makoto. But Edamame's changed, all of them have. This time Laurent's going to have to try a more direct approach than usual to get what he wants, which might just be everything.
Relationships: Edamura Makoto/Laurent Thierry, past Laurent Thierry/Dorothy
Comments: 23
Kudos: 153
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Find Me Somebody (To Love)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [intoxicatelou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intoxicatelou/gifts).



> Literally _all_ the spoilers for the Wizard of the Far East. This is started as one thing but turned into a pretty deep meditation on who Laurent is and what he wants from life after Case 4 and everything that goes with it.

“Care for a cigarette before bed, Edamame?”

Edamura Makoto is standing at the entrance to the yacht’s cabin, eyes fuzzy with fatigue, staring at the sunrise on the water. He’s rumpled and sloppy and beautiful and--now that Laurent has his retribution--the only thing left after all these years that Laurent Theirry is still chasing.

Before the Suzaku job, Laurent would never have offered.

He perks right up and holds out a hand towards Laurent, a request and invitation all at once. “Yeah.”

Laurent had a feeling he’d be happy to take the excuse to linger, just a little longer. He knew Edamura wasn’t quite ready to surrender at the end of the day quite yet despite all his yawns and claims of calling it a night.

But before the Suzaku job, Edamura would never have accepted.

They’re different people now, all of them, none so much as Edamura. Even exhausted, he stands straighter, moves smoother, hesitates less. He isn’t afraid of himself or the world, anymore. When Laurent holds out a cigarette, he plucks it away with agile grace and leans into the proffered light.

It’s easier to look at him now that it’s over. Of course, everything is easier now that this job--this mission really--is over.

God, Laurent had hoped he’d feel like this--light, free--but he hadn’t really believed it would happen, not even when he threw Dorothy’s ring into the water.

Yet, watching his little soybean move to lean over the hull rail of the yacht, flicking ash into the water, he no longer feels the weight of Dorothy’s absence, the guilt over her death. He feels like he can exhale. Finally. He feels like Dorothy would be proud of his work on this job, or as close as she’d ever come to pride, which is to say deliriously entertained with the whole affair. And that’s just as good, isn’t it?

Yes, he thinks so.

“Edamame?”

He looks up, cigarette barely hanging on to the edge of his lips and, God, he’s so quiet. Dorothy used to talk a mile a minute, even when there wasn’t anyone to listen to her. But Laurent’s not looking for a replacement for her. There’s no such thing. If he tried, he’d always be disappointed.

Edamura Makoto has never disappointed Laurent, not once since they met. Regardless of what Edamura’s perception of the situation may be. He’s always been everything Laurent wanted him to be, and then risen to greater heights with all the effort and passion he puts into everything he says and does. It’s been compelling since the moment he followed Laurent into that taxi.

“Will you make coffee for me?” Laurent asks, because he can’t stop thinking about the way Edamura’d responded to his idea about opening a cafe. Edamura's always made coffee, it's what he does, without thinking about it, like the very act centers him though Laurent doesn't know if anyone else notices. It's just so _him_ that the thing that appeals about the idea of making a life out of the interest is the fact that it makes other people happy.

It sums Edamura up, really. He takes anything Laurent throws his way, expands and enriches it with a depth and heart that Laurent didn't even realize he was missing and, in turn, makes Laurent want to be better than skilled, creative, vengeful, righteous or even triumphant. He makes Laurent want to be _good_ , all the way down to the bone, the way Edamura is good.

“What? Now?” He nearly drops the cigarette, but catches it between his long thief’s fingers before it can fall. “I’m too tired.” He says on a yawn so loud his jaw actually cracks. “And you’ll never get to sleep if you have coffee now.”

“Alright then. With breakfast.”

“Breakfast?”

“Yes.”

Edamura shrugs “Sure, I guess. I mean, it’ll be dinner by the time we get up but-“

“Then we’ll have to go to bed first, so whenever we get up will be breakfast.”

“We wha-“

Laurent kisses Edamura then, because he is adorable and sincere and a grade A idiot. He tastes like his cigarette and Cassano’s expensive champagne with a hint of the ever present coffee underneath it and success and surprise and a little bit of blood from being knocked around. He tastes like hope because that’s what Edamura’s always been for Laurent. _Hope_. Hope and the possibility of things getting better than they had been before.

Laurent is a confident son of a bitch, and he knows Edamura but he wasn’t totally sure, only mostly. So it’s a little bit of a relief when he kisses back for a few blissfully intense moments. It’s not at all surprising he flails away, arms pinwheeling until he collides with the rail. “What the hell was that? Did I fall asleep?”

“That, my dear Edamame, is what is commonly known as a kiss. A _French_ kiss even, what with that being one of the native tongues involved.” He leans in and rubs the side of his nose against Edamura’s. “Feels a bit like a dream though, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t get cute with me.”

Laurent pulls back and grins, flicking his own cigarette into the ocean. He’s going to need both hands, he can already tell. “I’m cute all the time, not with you specifically.”

“You’re never cute.” Edamura practically hisses like a wet cat staring down a large curious dog. He points directly at Laurent, the cherry of the withering cigarette coming dangerously close to his skin. “What you are is a bastard.”

Laurent grabs his wrist and pulls it away and down because he won’t have a fire hazard marking up his face. His good looks are too important to the work.

And he won’t have Edamura pushing him away when at least half of him is leaning in for more. Laurent knows that deep down, Edamura’s been waiting for an invitation to this since the department store in L.A., when Laurent pressed against his slender back and reached around him in an embrace to slide a two-hundred dollar fountain pen into his breast pocket, feeling the breath hitch in that narrow chest under his hands for the first time. After all, Laurent’s been wanting since then to make the invitation. The time simply hasn’t been right before and Laurent is nothing, if not, a master of timing.

This has been coming for ages and just because Edamura isn’t the type to realize that on his own, doesn’t mean Laurent will let it pass. “A bastard who wants to take you to bed now and make you breakfast when we get up.”

“Yeah right.” Edamura scoffs, turning his face away, out towards the rising sun. “This is some angle right? For the next con? Just tell me, alright?” He drags his teeth over his lower lip and visibly attempts to blink away his fatigue and frustration and the hurt that he so obviously feels. “It’s late, and I’m tired.”

Oh, he is _precious_. Laurent catches him by the chin with his other hand and holds him steady. “No con, my sweet soybean.”

“I am _not_ your sweet soybean.” He snaps but he doesn’t pull away.

“You are.” He runs his thumb over that pretty lower lip. “Sweet. And mine.”

“Fuck you,” Edamura snaps, his brown eyes narrowing though he’s missing his thick lenses in the wake of the party. The expression is pure fire, everything excellent about him distilled into one gaze and Laurent goes from half hard to rock.

“Yes. Exactly. That’s exactly what this is about.” He drags his thumb down, pulling his lip down teasingly like he wants to with his teeth. “Come to my cabin, Edamame, and fuck me.”

It’s been so long since he touched someone he truly wanted. Years since he was with someone he loved.

It's a different kind of love, than the last time, but how can it be anything else when Edamura Makoto is so utterly different from her in such fascinating and enticing ways. Only the fire inside is the same, though it lights over different things for different reasons in different ways. Where Dorothy couldn’t wait to let go, to run, to start over, to cut ties and let that fire burn free, Edamura's fundamental nature is to holds on--with his teeth and his fingernails, and his arms and his legs and his whole heart so that he can burn brightly for the people around him and help them burn too, which Laurent is more than a little covetous of and profoundly susceptible to. Over the last half a decade, without intending to, Laurent has done everything he can to be in the glow of that flame, whether Edamura wanted him there or not.

Laurent would have looped Edamura into the fold somehow, for Oz’s sake, of course. That was always in the cards but the stubborn and volatile way he’d forced Laurent to accommodate him, the combination of that spectacular confidence in his ability and identity coupled with the abject terror he battled through to reach his goals was a cocktail Laurent couldn’t resist, enticing and tricking him into job after job, because Laurent wanted more - more time, more money, more fantastical games of pretend, more of Edamura trying and succeeding and conning smug superior assholes while still being so fucking _good_ to everyone around him even when he was furious or terrified or worn down.

Of course, this prickly, brilliant, warm, masterpiece of a man is nothing like anything or anyone Laurent’s ever had before but he’s greedy and a master of procuring what he wants. And what he wants is Edamura Makoto, in his bed even if he’s not in love with Laurent back.

Yet.

“You- what?”

“Come to my cabin and fuck me.” Laurent repeats. He smiles, his most charming smile, the one that has made actual royalty do what he tells them and say "thank you" after, and says “Please.”

“You have got to be kidding.”

“I’m not. Edamame-“

“Don’t call me that when you’re talking about, you know, this stuff.“

“Makoto then,” Laurent offers, which earns him an annoyed huff and a nod, but that’s alright. He’s been waiting for a chance to call him Makoto. It’s almost a relief to shift to such an intimacy. Pet names can only carry a person so far.

Laurent tips that face up and thinks about all the letters he wrote this man when he was in prison that were never answered, all the time Laurent waited for him to join him in the game, all the times Makoto said "Never again," and Laurent ignored him for one last con that was _never_ the last.

Laurent once thought that things turning out alright was enough to earn forgiveness. After everything, he’s finally starting to realize some things shouldn’t be manipulated. Some things matter too much. Well, some _people_ at least, and the things that they want. He’s had a lot of nights in a lot of empty hotel rooms to think about it and of all the things he got wrong, practically dragging Dorothy into a commitment she didn’t want is the one he regrets the most. He won’t do that to someone he loves again.

That doesn’t mean he won’t try to win it, of course, through all his tools of persuasion. He is still Laurent Theirry after all. He is not a man to give up once he’s fixed his eyes on something he wants much like the great Hideyoshi, who he's carried around in his pocket ever since Edamura pressed his plastic form into his hand. He just won’t push, not like he did before. He can do that differently, at least, now that all that he’s been working towards so single-mindedly is over - more diplomat and less hustler.

In that spirit, Laurent drops his wrist and flattens his hand on his cheek. “Makoto, I’m asking you to come to my bed because I want to have you with me, inside of me, and I have for a very long time. But this isn’t a con. I know I’ve said that before and you’ve found yourself in places you didn’t want to be. I’m not going to apologize for that because I’m not sorry but I promise you, if you don’t want to do this, you can say no.”

Makoto looks up at him suspiciously. “And if I say no?”

Laurent sighs. He did not calculate for this. Or rather, he did, but they’ve all been drinking tonight and it’s been so long since he made a Seduce Edamame Plan that included Edamame doing anything more than taking him up on the offer or turning him down flat, he can’t actually remember what his contingencies for this response are. So he’s got to improvise. He hates this, actually. He likes having a plan, back-up strategies. He doesn’t like having to go off script but, this is his Edamame. Going off script is practically all he does. It’s his most valuable asset and Laurent knows it, which means that while he may not have planned for that question, specifically, he did account for something unexpected to happen.

So Laurent has been bracing to give the honesty a moment like this would require since he decided to do this, years ago, on that beach on Cynthia’s private island when he told Edamura he would wait for him, and then did. He just didn’t expect it to feel so much like jumping off a cliff.

Ah, well. C’est la vie.

“Then I walk away. You can go on open your friendly little coffee shop or you can go to Patagonia and herd llamas if you like. I don’t know, it’ll be up to you. That’s the point.”

“Or I can say yes and, uh, we can have sex now. Right?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“‘Okay you understand’ or ‘okay you want to go have sex now’?”

Pink rushes into Makoto’s cheeks and down his delicate neck works as he swallows so hard that the click is audible. It’s delightful. Laurent tries not to smirk and fails horribly. This is going to be fantastic.

“The second one.” He scowls. "Stop smiling, you asshole.” It’s an order that is absolutely impossible to follow even if Laurent were the type to do what he’s told, which he never has been.

He glares and gives Laurent’s chest a shove. Laurent catches his wrist and tugs his hand up, kissing the palm. “No. I don’t think I will. I’m too excited about my impending ravishment.”

“I said stop,” comes out weak because Laurent is mouthing his hand, along the webbing between his thumb and index finger then up towards his wrist, pulling him towards the cabin. “Oh my god, is this a French thing or is it just you?”

“I have no idea what you’re referring to.” Laurent says around Makoto’s middle finger, which he sucked into his mouth seconds later. It still tastes a little like gunshot residue. He can’t wait to have it inside him.

“It’s just you, isn’t it? Abbie and Cynthia warned me you were filthy and I didn’t listen.”

Laurent pulls off his finger with a pop, backing them both into his small but luxurious cabin, grinning. “And aren’t you just the luckiest man in the whole Pacific this morning for it?”

“Yeah. I guess I am.” Makoto laughs, that blush heating up his skin and Laurent just wants to put his mouth absolutely everywhere. He is going to but then Makoto touches his face for the first time. It’s enough to pull Laurent up so fast he may as well have been frozen in a liquid nitrogen bath.

It’s what he’s wanted, all this time, for Edamura Makoto to reach out to him first and it breaks something in him, in the way only getting something he’s been longing for can. He covers his delicate, careful hand on his face and breathes, “Edamame.“

“I can’t keep a straight face if you call me that when we’re like this.”

“Who told you you had to keep a straight face?”

“But how am I supposed to-” He makes a face that probably means ‘fuck you into the berth’ in anxious twenty-something innocent, one of the few languages Laurent never spoke a day in his life. “If I feel ridiculous?”

“Ridiculously. Most sex is ridiculous, after all. Come here, Edamame.” Laurent drops onto the mattress. He sprawls back, resembling something out of those lush Renaissance paintings of a decadent biblical temptress that Cynthia remembers the names of so that he doesn’t have to, and holds out a hand. “Let me show you.”

Makoto takes his hand and allows himself to be pulled into the narrow berth. He lets go only to shed his jacket as he join Laurent on the bed and doesn’t even hesitate when Laurent intertwines his fingers between Makoto’s to lace their hands together.

He wasn’t looking for anything or anyone but closure, and maybe a dose of cold, hard comeuppance. Yet he found Edamura Makoto and he doesn’t want Edamame to be anyone but who he is - small and strong and brilliant and kind. Leaning in to him when he should run. Letting him touch the open V of his shirt, where a handful of buttons have been open all night. And his. _All his_.

“Edamame,” he purrs, pressing kisses along that open space and up that lovely long neck. “Ma douceur à moi.”

"You can't keep saying that." Makoto huffs but when grabs the back of his neck, he doesn’t pull Laurent’s mouth away. “I speak enough French to know what that means, asshole. I lived there, remember?”

“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi.” He bites the patch of skin on Makoto’s neck, just under his right jaw. “Ce soir?”

“Oh my god,” Makoto moans, half in annoyance and half in response to Laurent’s mouth. “Why are you like this? It’s six in the morning.”

“You did learn something. Get my pants off, Edamame. I’ll give you a treat for being such a good student.”

That earns his shoulder a shove, not hard enough to actually push him away but still, a shove.

“No. No we’re not doing that.”

“Teacher/student role-play a bridge too far? Alright.” He nips at the soft skin stretched over Makoto’s Adam’s apple. “I’ll admit, that is surprising but it is important to set hard limits. ”

“No,” he says again, sharper this time. “Because if we’re going to do this, then it’s going to be us. No games, no bullshit, no cons. That’s what you said right? That this isn’t a con.”

Laurent goes still and tips his head back to look up into those coffee colored eyes and sees fear there and just behind it, longing for something real. He recognizes it because he used to look at Dorothy the same way.

It’s how he knows what _not_ to do.

“It’s not. I can do that. No role-play, no costumes. Just you and me.”

“Yeah.” Makoto swallows, another one of those desperate gulps that are likely more about swallowing down his fears than hydration. “You and me.”

There’s nothing graceful about getting out of their clothes. It’s a mess of rustling fabric and grabbing hands and kicking legs but eventually, Makoto is naked and Laurent’s left in just his shirt which is completely open and pushed off his chest and hanging off his shoulders like the world’s shortest robe.

Makoto’s skin is smooth from working for Suzaku with only the barest traces of his mechanic’s calluses and his touch is shy as his hands skate up Laurent’s stomach and over his pecs.

Laurent, for his part, is acquainting himself with the fit of Makoto’s cock in his hand. It’s steel and fire in his palm and his foreskin slides like ice over glass while Laurent moves his wrist. He fits his fist well, of average girth but longer than Laurent was expecting with a slight curve. Every time he strokes, Makoto’s breath hitches and he moves to meet him, restrained but eager, and he’s starting to leak over Laurent’s fingers.

That cock is going to feel so good inside him. It’s making him clench just thinking about it.

“Let me get what we need. You're stunning so stay just like that. Don’t move.”

“What?”

It’s an effort to find the supplies he stashes by every bed he sleeps in without falling out of bed but he manages, finding the little bag shoved into the front compartment of his carryon which lies. He tosses it up beside them and Makoto huffs.

“You have the longest arms.”

“Useful now, though, aren’t they?"

He sits back and slides a hand up Laurent’s calf. “I wasn’t complaining.”

“Let me show you how I’ll use them, hm? Oh, here,” he tosses Makoto a condom out of the little bag. 

He hikes his knees up to his chest and lets Makoto look as he covers himself in latex. He hasn’t been with a man since, goodness, Milan? Or perhaps Berlin. He can’t remember. But he remembers how to hold himself open, show his hole off and make himself an irresistible invitation as he prepares himself.

Except Makoto isn’t diving in, dick first. He’s staring, gobsmacked, on the verge of one of those terribly Japanese nosebleeds. Laurent sighs and extends one leg, wrapping it around his waist and tugging him forward. Makoto lets himself be moved, so much more pliant that he’s ever been about anything before, and falls over Laurent on all fours, a lovely taut cage of limbs that is much better for Laurent’s purposes.

“You can stare later, mon coeur. Fuck me now. Alright?”

“But you’re just-“ He breaks off and buries his face in Laurent’s neck and makes a positively wounded noise.

His cock is a hard, solid weight against Laurent’s belly. He’s burning, he’s so eager. Laurent can’t wait. He’s been excited but now he’s hungry. He reaches between them and moves _just so_ and they fit together, with Makoto’s face tucked in his neck.

Makoto jerks in his touch and Laurent lifts his hip to meet him, like rolling into the waves beneath them and _oh yes, god_ , he's missed being fucked.

“Oh god. Oh god-”

“Yes, Christ.” He drops his other foot to the berth and pushes up again, fucking himself onto the hard cock filling him up, making him sweat through the lavender shirt he still hadn’t managed to get all the way off. “Oh, Christ, Edamame. You feel so good.”

“No. No, god, shut up. Shut up. You keep doing these things, saying these things and I can’t-” He lifts his head and he looks practically frantic. “I can’t think.“

 _Oh_. He’d known that Makoto was telling the truth about not being a virgin so he’d thought he was more prepared than this, that someone else had seen him and taken him part of the way here before Laurent greedily snapped him up but no, it’s too much. He can see it all over his face. Whatever he's done, it was different from what they're doing now. The pleasure, the power, the intimacy, it’s more than he was prepared for.

Laurent reaches up to cup his face between his palms and strokes over his sharp black brows. “My sweet soybean,” he says, his voice light with the strangeness of being overcome with fondness while also overwhelmed with lust. “You don’t need to think now. It’ll all be there to think about later. I give you my word. You can just fuck me now and I’ll take care of you.”

“Bullshit,” he chokes out. Years old anger at Laurent, and even older betrayal at his father that Laurent could never have prevented but still feels guilty for, infuses the word with weight and gravity.

“No, I have you. Don’t I always get you to the other side in one piece?” He leans up and presses a kiss to those panting lips. “Don’t I?”

Makoto doesn’t respond right away. He closes his eyes against the question and a forever goes by.

There is only the sound of their breathing and the white noise of the ocean and the red hot bar of iron skewering his guts to distract Laurent from the stark rawness of his own emotions at this moment. He’s not particularly used to letting himself experience things so deeply and there is so much to feel in this moment, as he gives in to the vulnerability of being anything like genuine. It’s overwhelming, the aching affection that filled the spaces between bones for this man and the burn of desire to keep him forever, in that greedy way he has of holding people close to him, whether they want him to or not, now that he’s allowed himself to feel it fully.

It’s against his instincts, to make himself stay present in that storm of feeling, but this is the least he can do when he is given the honor of being able to bear witness the chaotic riot of expressions that contort across Makoto’s features as he tries not to express every emotion he’s feeling so blatantly on his face.

Makoto’s expression finally settles, into a look that is all terrified, trembling mouth and hopeful, huge eyes. “You can’t laugh at me again,” he says when he finally speaks and his voice is cracking down a fault line. “Not now.”

“Am I laughing?” His hands are large enough to span Makoto’s round face and Laurent can smooth his furrowed brow with his fingertips without letting go of his cheeks. He pushes the fear out of them with gentle pressure and rolls his hips. His breath hitches as Makoto meets him in awkward thrusts that are so much better, so close to what he wants. “I’m not. No con here Edamame, I- ah!”

A sudden confident pump of Makoto’s hips has his hands jerking back to grab hold of Makoto's narrow shoulders, finding their slender muscle deceptively strong under the strain of his desperate grip for purchase. The new pace is electric and Laurent can feel himself unspooling. He’d normally grab a hold of that thread here, do something to keep himself together no matter how good it was and think of something to bring him back to solid ground, but the reality is that he’s safe with Makoto, safer than he’s been since his mother lost everything maybe, so he doesn’t have to do that now. He can fall apart. So he does, whining and desperate and hungry like he never allows himself to be in the rest of his life, free to say exactly what he wants, which is just a sloppy moan of, “Oh, fuck. God, oh my God, like that.” He hitches his leg up higher around Makoto’s back, changing the angle, taking his cock deeper. “Ah, yes, just like that. Fuck me just like that.”

He’s a quick study--fucking Laurent steadily within seconds. The scrape on his insides, the insistent pressure on his rim and inside his hole, the sharp spike every time Makoto hit his prostate, it’s so good he can’t breathe. He lifts one hand to catch hold of a fistful of that black hair because his shoulders are good but they're not enough. He needs to feel more and his hair is so soft, so thick in his hand, a perfect counterpoint to bursts of Makoto's flavor he gets every time he manages to drag his tongue over the skin of his chin or jaw or neck.

Makoto doesn’t seem like he’s content to just let Laurent take his fucking in peace. He’s staring down at him and his dark eyes are burning. “You really mean it, don’t you? You really do want me?”

“Yes,” Laurent confesses because he can’t think of anything but now, this--the feeling of being so beautifully fucked with an undercurrent of newness, of uncertainty, of concern. His world has narrowed to just the hair between his fingers and the skin against his thighs and stomach and beneath his heel.

Right now, there’s just this. No con. No pretense or pretend or secrets kept. Just them. He doesn’t know the last time he felt this real and he’s terrified of it. He wants more. That’s why Laurent makes himself say the truth, which is, “Since the beginning.”

“Laurent,” Makoto says on a needy exhale. It might be the first time thing he’s ever heard Makoto say his name like he actually _likes_ him.

He wants to hear it again. And again. And again. Until it’s the only sound he knows.

“Yes. Say my name and kiss me while you fuck me. I want it.”

Makoto’s eyes go soft, like when he’s looking at cats or children or beautiful things he thinks need saving. Laurent feels crushed by the weight of that look directed at him, of all things. It’s an extra layer of force that hits him when Makoto kisses him and says his name again, “Laurent,” just like he asked, all the while working his cock in deeper and deeper until he breaks away from his mouth panting and looking almost angry.

“Damnit,” Makoto gasps, sad and frantic. “You always do this to me, you asshole. You turn me around and drag me in until I can’t get out.”

“You like it,” Laurent points out, breathless. He locks his arms behind Makoto’s neck and smiles at him. Gives him another truth because he seems to like those so much. “I like it.”

“But how can I open a cafe? How am I supposed to do anything when you won't let me go," Makoto protests, and oh, no, he’s absolutely desolate. There are even tears in his eyes and they glitter like the early morning sunlight across the ocean out the window. "I need to be able to live the rest of my life without you. So just tell me now, alright? When are you going to let me go?” he demands and one of those waterford tears escapes and lands on Laurent's collarbone in a hot splash. 

Laurent can’t have that. He leans up, stopping just shy of those soft, warm lips and breathes, “Not ever,” into his smoke and coffee mouth before kissing him.

The noise Makoto makes in response is a wounded, animal thing that at the same time makes him more of a man to Laurent than anything else he’s ever said or done. Both his skinny arms around Laurent’s back and pulls him close, fucking him with a force that is enough to shake his lungs against his rib cage.

Laurent doesn’t think anyone’s ever held him this close before, clutched him this tightly. He likes it, could sink into it, live there in this place where he is wanted and his desire is appreciated with such fierceness. The electric ache supercharges his body into overload when added to the drag of his cock against the smooth hot skin and the thin patch of coarse hair on Makoto’s stomach every time they move and the thick stretch and unrelenting slam of Makoto cock’s in his slick, grasping hole.

The last thought Laurent has, as he crashes over the edge into blinding pleasure, is how with Makoto, holding and held by him like this, he isn’t lonely. For the first time in _years_ , he isn’t lonely anymore.

It’s funny because as a confidence man, Laurent is a consummate liar. Lying is his art and his trade and yet, it’s only now, breathless and blinking through the afterglow, that he realizes that he has been lying to himself, for longer than he’s ever lied to anyone else, about this loneliness and what he’s been doing with this crew since the day Dorothy scooped him up out of the trash. With Makoto’s a heavy weight on top of him, anchoring him to the reality of this moment, Laurent cannot ignore the fact that despite the constant declarations that they are not a team, a family, lovers, that there were no mistakes and no forgiveness - all Laurent has done is try to build those very things in Team Confidence because he has been so deeply, fundamentally lonely since his mother lost the restaurant and he lost the dreams he built his entire identity around.

He doesn’t know how successful he’s been, but there are people on this boat who have been together for more than a decade because of him, so he supposes he didn’t fail completely. What he knows for sure is that moment, a carnal eternity ago, when Makoto all but asked _keep me_ and he all but offered _forever_ , it was like finally, Laurent has been given permission to go home. In this bed, in the arms of this man, in sheets tangled with sex and sweat and cigarettes and promises and affection and new trust, Laurent thinks that he find out what that means to him now, with some trial and error.

“Sleep.” Makoto mumbles into his neck, curling against him. He doesn’t let go, just presses his face into Laurent’s neck. “Coffee later. An’ you owe me breakfast.”

“Of course.” Laurent agrees, petting the thick short hairs at the nape of Makoto’s neck like he would a cat. “I’m good at my word.”

Makoto makes a sound that’s meant to be a snort of disdain, but he’s comedrunk and drifting off, so it’s toothless and snuffling. It’s cute. _He’s_ cute. And he’s staying--his arms still wrapped around Laurent too tightly to be truly comfortable, and there’s no way this can really last - not with how sticky everything is going to become very soon - but it’s a start. It's a start to something Laurent thinks could last for the rest of his life.

And it will probably make them both happier than he ever could have made Dorothy, as much as he’d loved her.

In the end, they were different people who wanted _very_ different things, long before the Shanghai job went to hell. There's nothing wrong with falling for someone who listens to what he has to say and gives him things to carry with him when they're apart and trusts him to take care of them, to save them, when things get dangerous, and to have somewhere safe to set down roots and grow with them, for the long haul. Those are all things Laurent has always been allowed to want to share with another person, but it has always had to be with someone who wanted to receive them from him. Dorothy never wanted any of those things and he just didn't want to hear it. _Refused_ to hear it.

She wasn't made for the kind of love he wants and he figured it out too late. He never got to love her the right way. He never got to tell her he understood. He only just let her go, as a ghost, instead of the way she deserved--free and joyous and untethered to continue to run full-speed into her next adventure. When it comes to loving her, that's really his only regret.

Besides letting her die, of course, but that could go without saying.

If she'd wanted him to be half as happy as he wanted her to be, she’d be pleased because Makoto does want those things. He hasn't asked for it so much as tried to scrape it out of his own life and his friendships and he makes room for Laurent in all of it, even though he probably shouldn't, probably would be better off if he didn't. Until now. Suddenly, Laurent sees stretching before him nothing specific so much as a sense of commitment, a willingness in himself to bend if and when needed to fit his life with Makoto's. For something so vague, it's absolutely exhilarating.

It's nothing like what he had with Dorothy, but he wouldn’t want it to be, not anymore. After all, it's not like Laurent was looking for a replacement for her. There’s no such thing. If he were, he’d always be disappointed. No, he had hunted down Edamura Makoto with the same calculation and premeditation that Dorothy used to find him all those years ago. It was just his luck that what Laurent found in his Edamame was something completely new, someone who fits the man he is today and, who, maybe, if he’s smart and careful and can stay patient, he’ll never have to let go again. 

So, he thinks, yes, she'd be happy for him.

Laurent presses a kiss to the top of his head, thick hair tickling his lips and nose and making himself smile. "Such little faith, Edamame. I'll take care of you. You'll see."

"Prove it."

It's a different kind of request than the frantic one earlier. It's not unlike the Hideyoshi figure sitting in the pocket of his discarded slacks on the floor and waiting to be taken up again, and just as much of a gift, freely given. Yes, Laurent can keep this. He's allowed. Challenged even. His Edamame has so many ways of saying, _take my challenge and take me too_. 

Laurent wraps his arms around that slender back, letting his palms begin a smooth glide up and down, acquainting themselves with the soft skin there. He closes his eyes, sighs as best he can under the welcome weight of Makoto's body and promises, "I will."

**Author's Note:**

> Title, from Somebody to Love by Queen. Because of course it is. This is Great Pretender - of course the title is from a Queen song.
> 
> All thanks to my betas and French helper R, S & T. Couldnt have done it without yall. <3333


End file.
